Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Waymo\u2019s driverless cars have been rolling through Center City<\/a> for almost a year now. Still with a trained specialist behind the wheel, still without a commercial launch date.<\/p>\n Some of our local elected officials have expressed concerns about driverless vehicles on Philadelphia streets. Based on what has happened in other cities, their concerns are not unfounded. When it comes to deploying robotaxis, Philadelphia should slow down, not speed up.<\/p>\n The pattern that has emerged across the country is that problems that should have been caught during testing are instead being confronted when the autonomous vehicles have already been deployed and are carrying passengers.<\/p>\n Start with what happened in Austin, Texas, this spring<\/a>. When a gunman opened fire outside a bar on Sixth Street, killing three people and wounding more than a dozen, several Waymo vehicles ended up blocking the emergency response. One sat sideways in the road as an ambulance tried to get through, with bystanders shouting at it to move, while a police officer worked the car\u2019s speaker system trying to get a human being on the line.<\/p>\n In San Francisco, fire crews and other first responders have had to physically take control of stalled Waymos<\/a> to move them out of the way during emergencies. These aren\u2019t isolated glitches.<\/p>\n Federal regulators counted at least six incidents nationally in which first responders had to take control of a Waymo vehicle during an emergency. In July, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told the industry<\/a> that emergency scenes are not rare or extreme \u201cedge cases,\u201d and that an automated vehicle unable to interact safely with first responders is a danger to the public.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the backdrop against which Philadelphia is being asked to move forward.<\/p>\n Councilmember Nina Ahmad<\/a> gave voice to concerns<\/a> after a City Council hearing in May. \u201cProgress for the sake of progress isn\u2019t enough. We need to look at the impact of that progress,\u201d she said during a news conference. She wasn\u2019t the only Council member who expressed reservations, or whose questions for Waymo went unanswered at the hearing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Under state law, PennDot holds the authority<\/a> to certify these vehicles for full commercial service. City officials have said Philadelphia is preempted from regulating this technology at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n